This invention pertains to a method and a system to detect and reward the return of shopping carts to the collection points provided for them at the shopping centers as defined in the preamble of patent claim 1 and patent claim 12.
Self-service shopping centers and similar operations are generally interested in the customers using a shopping cart to go shopping. To this end, shopping carts are normally kept in collection points where the customer can take one with them to the shopping center. However, the customers are not typically motivated enough to bring the shopping cart that they have used back to the collection point after finishing their shopping. Instead, the shopping carts are often left where they had been unloaded—normally right in the middle of the parking lot of the shopping center. This results in additional costs for the shopping center since personnel must be on hand to gather the abandoned shopping carts. Also, there is always the danger of damage to parked cars due to abandoned shopping carts.
In order to provide an incentive to the customers for returning the used shopping carts to the collection point, a proven method has been to provide the shopping carts with lock boxes. This allows the customer to remove a shopping cart from the collection point only if he has inserted a refundable coin or the like into the lock box. This refundable coin is only then released back to the customer when the shopping cart is properly returned to the collection point. In addition to the anger that is not conducive to the customer's mood for shopping when he does not have any refundable coins available, the lock box system has been found to be an inordinate bother and an over-regulation depending on the type of customer.
To avoid this disadvantage to the lock box system, an electronic system to detect and reward the return of shopping carts has been proposed, for example in WO 98/1197, in which each shopping cart is provided with an electronic sender-receiver apparatus. With its help, the route of every shopping cart is reproduced and saved using detection means inside the shopping center, in particular at the cash register, and at the collection points. A central data processing apparatus recognizes if a shopping cart has passed through the cash register and has arrived at the collection point, and then sends a bonus in the form of a credit certificate or a participation certificate for a lottery. However, along with the clearly improved comfort for the customer in comparison to the widely used lock box system comes a detriment to the shopping cart return: the core of a lock box system consists usually of a lock box attached to the handle of every shopping cart with a hanging chain, with the chain having at its free end an actuating element for an adjacent lock box. This actuating element can be inserted only into an adjacent lock box, thus releasing the refundable coin deposited there if the two affected shopping carts are properly stacked into one another. An electronic return system such as that in WO 98/51197 can, however, not ensure necessarily that the shopping cart is not just haphazardly stored in the collection point but is properly put away there in a stacked row.